Using a patient's name seems to work like magic, e.g. "Mr. Smith, can you tell me a bit more about x..." when they start rambling about seemingly unrelated history ("my tomatoes are really coming in this year!" or "my niece just started engineering school at ...").

Not a doctor, but a medical student. Just saw the video. Hoping for the best but it looks like it could be either ACL, PCL or both. No twisting so MCL is unlikely but it is a part of the joint capsule, so still possible. :(

My insight = it'll be pretty interesting in every small group activity you do when they ask what people majored in or did before medical school. It's 90% biology, or biomedical science, or other science majors (biochemistry, chemistry, etc). and there will be a rare English/Philosophy/Government major, and then it gets to you and you're like "I was a welder."

I do feel like it's cheesy but the only person to compete with is yourself. You can't control what other people are doing and you don't have their background and they don't have yours. So you just try to be the best possible version of yourself.

And if your bf/gf does better than you in certain things, you can still be happy for them, and the same should hold true if the shoe was on the other foot. If it works out and you're in it for the long haul, you should support each other and their successes become your successes, and yours become theirs.

It seems to me that it's a problem when, even with "80 hour work weeks," surgery trainees observed in this study only had autonomy 33% of the time in their final six months of training.

Asking the Germans is fine, but their health care system, and medico-legal system, are different than ours, so I'm not sure the comparison is apt. Australia has better health outcomes than we do in the U.S. as well, and their training is much more humane. I don't think the point is to compare the the state of surgery trainees to those in other countries.

What I'm driving at, is I don't think wanting "to have a life outside of work during residency" is compatible with the current state of surgical training in the U.S., and even with the time demands, it seems like more than a few of the newly graduated surgeons are not completely confident in their ability to practice independently.

How do we fix it? I don't know, and I don't have any skin in the game - I'm not an aspiring surgeon.

This question does get asked a lot so I'd probably do a search and read people's responses. I have a SP4, and an iPad, but not a Pro.

I like the SP4. I print class slides to OneNote, keeps them organized, and I can annotate as needed on them with the included Surface Pen (and I can draw/digitally paint on it pretty well too).

The memory is also expandable, which isn't easy to do in an iPad, I don't think. You just pop a microSD card in a slot under the stand. As another poster mentioned, it's also a full operating system on the Surface Pro and you can run any Windows app on it (not just iOS apps like the iPad).

With the iPad Pro, I'm pretty sure you have to buy the Pencil as well. However, with the Surface Pro 4/whatever, you'll want to be the keyboard type cover most likely.

At the end of the day, either will get the job done, so it's really your personal preference and which "ecosystem" you're more invested in.

Legitimately curious how you're going to learn surgery, & see the natural history of acute surgical problems if you're not working and actually assisting and doing surgery, which unfortunately takes a decent chunk of time to learn how to do.

Have you seen any of the blogs coming out about whether or not new surgery graduates feel ready to practice independently or not?

I'd agree with everyone else saying don't make any decisions today. I hope you can find someone to talk to about your preparation - I won't be much help since I haven't taken CK yet, so I won't talk about things I don't know about.

Definitely wish you the best moving forward - things may look bleak now, but with some support and strategy, hopefully you can put a pass & improvement from Step 1 to Step 2 CK in your rear-view mirror.

If you can't see yourself enjoying the bread and butter of a specialty it's probably not for you. No matter what specialty you pick, every specialty has its quirks, but if you don't see yourself being engaged with the bread and butter stuff it's going to negatively impact your ability to care for your patients and your mental health.

1c-a. The pitcher is not allowed to do a motion to the, uh, batter, that prohibits the batter from doing, you know, just trying to hit the ball. You can't do that.

1c-b. Once the pitcher is in the stretch, he can't be over here and say to the runner, like, "I'm gonna get ya! I'm gonna tag you out! You better watch your butt!" and then just be like he didn't even do that.

1c-b(1). Like, if you're about to pitch and then don't pitch, you have to still pitch. You cannot not pitch. Does that make any sense?

1c-b(2). You gotta be, throwing motion of the ball, and then, until you just throw it.

1c-b(2)-a. Okay, well, you can have the ball up here, like this, but then there's the balk you gotta think about.

1c-b(2)-b. Fairuza Balk hasn't been in any movies in forever. I hope she wasn't typecast as that racist lady in American History X.

1c-b(2)-b(i). Oh wait, she was in The Waterboy too! That would be even worse.

Try the pomodoro method (there are apps available) - focused studying for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break, or focused studying for 50 minutes, then take a 10 minute break. During the breaks you do whatever you want that isn't studying - take a walk, exercise, watch TV, listen to music, whatever.

Find a study plan or create one. If you're doing any QBanks, you should have feedback to see what your weaknesses are, e.g. biochemistry, micro, or pathology.